


Broken.

by Crimbob



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, M/M, One Shot, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-03
Updated: 2016-02-03
Packaged: 2018-05-18 02:27:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5894542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crimbob/pseuds/Crimbob
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They were never meant to work. They were doomed from the start.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Broken.

Maybe in another time they would’ve worked. Maybe in another life, Remus and Sirius share small pecks over breakfast, in their shared flat that they bought the furniture for together, as they smile gently at one another, each uplift of their lips a small reminder of the eternally joyful not-so-secret secret that is their love. A world where Sirius loosely links his fingers with Remus’ as they wander down the high street, looking for a painting to hang over the bed they share, the bed that has seen their most exquisite pleasures, where they aren’t hurried in loving one another, where each breath, each moan shared is one stored away for later perusal, all their time spent together a wonderful time, filled with moments of happiness and joy that cannot be contained. It’s a happiness that culminates in simple bands on the fourth fingers of their left hands, and then somewhere down the line, the echoing cries of children, filling the house that the flat was swapped for, a long life full of the things they didn’t have. Could never have.

They had never broken apart because you can’t break away from something you were never a part of. They were culminated in their hurried hands, rolls of hips in hallways, sucks to the neck, chest, but their lips never meeting. They were in the shame that they felt on those days they allowed themselves to picture what everyone would think if they knew, the disgusted looks, casting them out of normal society, friends becoming wary acquaintances, their knowledge that even though it wasn’t wrong, it was still wrong. They found themselves cemented in the insults they hurled at one another when alone, to cover the feelings they both had and both knew the other had but never acknowledged, when it was easiest to hate, when it was easier to pretend that they didn’t ache for one another when they weren’t there, that they both had one simple fantasy, a slow meeting of lips for the first time.

They were fragmented, never whole, two boys who grew into men who couldn’t untangle themselves from one another. Who also knew absolutely nothing about the other. They were more alike than anyone they knew, and were more different than they could take. Leaving school meant leaving behind cold hallways for the hallway in their shared flat, nothing like the fantasy, with nice furniture and one bedroom and one bed, but rather there were two bedrooms, two beds, sweating and moaning in one or the other together, before sleeping apart not long after. When the fighting stopped, everything stopped. All that remained of them was war, the fight in the wider world destroying not only the lives of all around them, but destroying any lingering sense of feeling in what they were muddling through together. They no longer made it to each-others’ beds, they would be pressed together in the hallway, trousers still on, hands ghosting, not really touching, hurried, unloving, cold like they had both become.

They had other people, but never in the space they shared together, going out to dark clubs, where it was slightly more acceptable that all the people there were men, grinding against faceless shapes, quick mouths and hands in bathrooms before coming back home drunk, almost falling into bed with the other before remembering that they didn’t do that, they’d never done that. That they never shared a bed, they’d never been able to puzzle out how they fit together, the sort of intimacy they’d never breached.

They suspected one another, of course they did, how could they not, each thinking the other was the traitor, the person who was selling out everyone they cared about. They knew how well the other could keep a secret. They knew how easy it was for the other to hide huge parts of themselves, how much the other person seemed to not struggle at all, when they themselves felt like they were constantly drowning, struggling against the enormity of what was unsaid, hanging between the two of them.

When Sirius went to Azkaban, Remus knew. He knew that every time that he’d felt they were close, millimetres away from finally sealing their lips together, all the times they’d laughed in spite of the shame of their secret, all the times that there had been tenderness in their touches, every time they’d eaten a meal together, or spent a night just talking to each other about the things they couldn’t trust anyone else with, he knew.

He knew it was all a lie. He knew he was unlovable, a monster both in the gender of the people he loved and what he became every month. He was a monster for the specific person he had chosen to love. Remus knew that only an evil person would fall in love with an evil person, even if he was unaware of it. The devil had beckoned him in with loose, black curls and full lips, lips that had once wrapped around him, knees of trousers getting dirty from the thick dust layer on the floor, Remus slumped as his legs couldn’t hold him up anymore, sheer pleasure in every inch of him. The devil had stolen his heart, gripped it with long fingers and nail digging in, had not given anything back.

Maybe in another life, it wasn’t incredibly different. They were still the Remus and Sirius that they both currently knew, but in this one, instead of their first shared tumble over the edge culminating in awkward silences occasionally, until it happened again, both losing their hearts to the other without acknowledgement, maybe in another life they did. They kissed long and hard afterwards, threw around terms like “boyfriend” and “partner”, and loved one another in the way they both deserved. Their shared apartment, still with two bedrooms, but with one bed actually slept in, small pecks shared over breakfast. No suspicion of the other, Remus knowing about Peter, Remus being trusted, Remus able to stop Sirius from going after Peter, the two continuing their lives, mourning their losses properly, having one another to bring them through the darkness that was surrounding them.

But it hadn’t been that. It had been shame and humiliation and a twisted evil love sitting inside them and destroying them in every possible way, until this moment. The moment when Sirius was sat in a cold cell, thoughts muddled and cold from the fog of the guards around him, and Remus slumped, drunk on a toxic cocktail of whiskey and regret, in Sirius’ bed, surrounding himself with the smell of someone he couldn’t have, never had, never will have.

Maybe they were where they should’ve always been. Alone. Fractured. 

Broken.

**Author's Note:**

> This was just a quick drabble that's been floating around my head for a long time. I just needed to angst it out and write it. It currently stands unedited, if you notice anything super obviously bad, please let me know xx


End file.
